We love our animals to death, literally

EDITOR: This year's 10 highest grossing box office releases are about animals, including: "Finding Dory," "The Jungle Book," "Zootopia," "The Secret Life of Pets," and "Kung Fu Panda." Nearly half of our households include a dog and nearly 40 percent have a cat. Two-thirds of us view them as family members and cherish them accordingly. We love our animals to death.

Literally …

For every cat, dog or other animal that we love and cherish, we put 500 through months of caging, crowding, deprivation, mutilation and starvation before we take their lives, cut their dead bodies into little pieces, and shove those into our mouths. And that doesn't even include Dory and billions of her little friends, because we haven't figured out how to count individual aquatic animals that we grind up for human or animal feed.

The good news is that we have a choice every time we visit a restaurant or grocery store. We can choose live foods - yellow and green vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, grains, as well as a rich variety of grain and nut-based meats and dairy products. Or, we can choose dead animals, their body parts, and other products of their abuse.